Rotting garlic

Jim409(z5 IL)June 17, 2006

Last year in northern Illinois we had a serious draught with only one nasty consequence, our garlic rotted. I know, this is not what one would expect but we lost almost our entire crop. This year, with no drought, the same thing is happening but a month before the usual harvesting time. We have had great crops in the past ten years. We have very little room to rotate our stuff and I am beginning to wonder if this may be at the heart of the problem.

What I think you've got is called the 'onion white rot' or just 'white rot' for short. We've had it now for 2 years and are trying - using natural means - to eliminate it. Google has a bunch of links if you're interested. It destroyed over half our crop of 400 bulbs last year. Sigh. Hope this year will be better. We do rotate our garlic plantation w/ bush beans to fix N in the soil when we harvest in June/July (we live near San Francisco).

I'd like to post photos of our white rot-infested garlic but where's the photo upload option?